Joseph G. Weis is Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington. He served for a number of years as the Director of the National Center for the Assessment of Delinquent Behavior and Its Prevention, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as a member of the Washington State Governor’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee. He is a past editor of the journal Criminology and a co-author, with Michael J. Hindelang and Travis Hirschi, of Measuring Delinquency.
Designed for undergraduate juvenile delinquency courses, this book actively involves students in the literature of the discipline, presents the field in a format that is accessible, understandable, and enjoyable, and is edited by well-known scholars who are experienced researchers and teachers.''''+ The readings in this anthology have been very carefully edited and pruned by the Editors so that undergraduate students can easily read them without getting bogged down or confused and lost in the technical, methodological details.''''+ At no additional cost, we have included 5 substantial data analysis exercises spread throughout the book. These exercises not only teach students the basic of SPSS, the 'standard' data analysis software in social science, but also show them how they can test the delinquency theories and propositions covered in the reader, using current delinquency data packaged with the book. This absolutely unique feature is structured into fill-in-the-blank exercise sets that are easy to grade for large numbers of students by a single instructor.''''+ Over 150 very good questions have been put together for the readings so that instructors can easily test, even in large courses, whether or not their students are keeping up with the reading.''''+ A separate instructor's manual (with more tests) is also available.''
